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                   Dateline NBC
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On Dateline Friday, 9:00 PM: 

Tonight Barbara Walters returns to NBC for an exclusive interview with "Dateline 
NBC's" Jane Pauley. Walters and daughter Jackie Danforth talk for the first time about 
Jackie's troubled childhood, and how Jackie has put her past to use helping another 
generation of teens. 
Walters tells Pauley, "I'm doing an interview like this because Jackie said to me, 
'Tell other parents... I get calls all the time from people who say, How did this 
happen?' ...Tell them, Mommy, if it can happen to you, it can happen in any family.'"

In 1968 Walters and her husband Lee Guber adopted a baby girl they named Jacqueline. 
With two high-powered parents, Jackie grew up in a lifestyle that she had trouble 
relating to. By thirteen, Jackie was sneaking out at night, experimenting with drugs 
and skipping school. But worse was to come.

During the interview, Walters tells Jane Pauley, "Had I been wiser I would have seen 
things coming. Look, she's adopted, I don't want to make too much of that, but she is. 
She's too tall at [age] 12, she feels. Her father and mother are divorced, and her 
mother is some kind of celebrity. That's tough for a child to live with."

In the summer of 1984, Jackie ran away from home and for a month Walters did not know 
where her 15-year-old daughter was. When Jackie was found Walters made the difficult 
decision to send her daughter to an alternative school for troubled teens in Idaho. 
Danforth stayed in the program for three years and credits the program with saving her 
life. 

Today, Danforth has come full circle. After meeting and marrying wilderness guide Mark 
Danforth, she opened a camp in northern Maine called "New Horizons." At a recent visit 
to the camp she told Pauley she feels her own experiences help her get through to 
teenage girls at risk. "These girls obviously are doing the same things that I did. So 
when some of the girls act out, try to run, and things like that, which is very 
normal, typical, I have a better understanding of what my Mom went through."

These days, Danforth's life is focussed on other people's daughters, troubled 
teenagers like she used to be, but she has made the decision not to have children of 
her own. As for Walters, "She wants grandchildren bad," Danforth tells Pauley. "She 
loves kids. My mom is the most nurturing person in the world."

After the show, you can log on to our Web site at http://www.Dateline.MSNBC.com to 
learn more about Danforth's wilderness program, New Horizons.

 

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